Is the Public willing to help the Nigerian Police during the Boko Haram crisis? A look at moderating factors.

This paper sought the opinion of 200 Nigerians on their willingness to cooperate with the Police during the Boko Haram crisis. Public perceptions of Police effectiveness during the crisis, residence location, gender and religious affiliation were used as moderators. Data was analysed using an explanatory factor analysis and structural equation modelling. Results indicated a strong association between perceived effectiveness and willingness to report to the Police with respondents who question the effectiveness of the Police being less likely to be willing to report criminal activity about Boko Haram. Further to this, the impact of religion on willingness to report was at least partially mediated by perceived effectiveness of the Police with the results showing that Christian respondents perceived the Police as less effective. Females and those living in the North were significantly less willing to report criminal activity to the Police The findings are then discussed in relation to the BH crises and directions for future research are given

Prospective payment systems and discretionary coding - Evidence from English mental health providers

Reimbursement of English mental health hospitals is moving away from block contracts and towards activity and outcome-based payments. Under the new model, patients are categorised into 20 groups with similar levels of need, called clusters, to which prices may be assigned prospectively. Clinicians, who make clustering decisions, have substantial discretion and can, in principle, directly influence the level of reimbursement the hospital receives. This may create incentives for up-coding. Clinicians are supported in their allocation decision by a clinical clustering algorithm, the Mental Health Clustering Tool (MHCT), which provides an external reference against which clustering behaviour can be benchmarked. The aims of this study are to investigate the degree of mismatch between predicted and actual clustering and to test whether there are systematic differences amongst providers in their clustering behaviour. We use administrative data for all mental health patients in England who were clustered for the first time during the financial year 2014/15 and estimate multinomial multilevel models of over-, under- or matching clustering. Results suggest that hospitals vary systematically in their probability of mismatch but this variation is not consistently associated with observed hospital characteristics

Is Sweden Doomed to Repeat U.S. Errors?

Frauds committed by recipients of public insurance and providers of health care are stealing millions of kronor from Swedish taxpayers each year. Privatization in Sweden’s health care will likely increase the losses from fraud. Vårdval, Sweden’s latest method to transfer the delivery of health services from public entities to private ones, focuses on primary care and is an attempt to secure “seamless” treatment for patients at a nearby location and hopefully reduce health care costs. But the new policy also creates numerous opportunities for unscrupulous providers and patients to steal from Sweden’s taxpayer-supported programs. The intent of the current research was to explore the impacts of privatization on the regulation of Swedish health care. One of those impacts, it is argued, will be a need for Swedish officials to attend to a growing crime problem. Lessons from the United States suggest that government attention to the problem at this early stage is needed to prevent the thefts from growing and becoming a major drain on Sweden’s budget, as they are in the United States. </jats:p